'Obama can't afford a fair trial for Snowden' - Stephen Cohen

Who’s Edward Snowden more of a problem for now, Russia or the US? Has he sent US-Russian relations into a tailspin or did he just reaffirm the sad state of affairs? Is the 'Russian Reset' dead? Today we discuss the fallout from the Snowden case with Stephen Cohen, Professor of Russian Studies and History at New York University and Princeton University.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: At this point, to whom is
Snowden more of a problem – the US or Russia?

Steven
Cohen: From my perspective, he is a
problem for both. If we put this in historical context since the end
of the Soviet Union 22 years ago, we’ve lost several opportunities
to create a meaning for cooperative relationships between Washington
and Moscow. It appeared a few weeks ago that we had another
opportunity. The opportunity began with a tragedy - the bombings in
Boston. It was later clear that there was a need for a lot of
cooperation in counter-terrorism between Moscow and Washington. And
then, the Syrian civil war, whatever it is, ran out of control –
it’s certainly the worst crisis in the Middle East for many years.
It also appeared that Washington and Moscow were ready to do
something about it. And then came Snowden. Not only Snowden, but he
is clearly a setback -I would say both for President Putin and
President Obama.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: But you say that Putin is
handling the Snowden situation wisely…

Steven
Cohen: What makes us really interested
is that President Putin is the man that likes to control the
environment in which he makes international - and I suppose domestic
- decisions. He couldn’t control this. Snowden came literally out
of the blue and he hadn’t decided what to do. So he was caught and
he remains caught between two strong countervailing factors: On the
one hand, Putin pursues in a world which I would call not an
ANTI-American foreign policy, but an UN-American foreign policy or a
NON-American foreign policy. That is, a foreign policy rather
different from the US in many areas. Therefore, he could not turn in
Snowden - a highly symbolic figure - over to the US. On the other
hand, it’s absolutely clear that Putin wants some kind of
cooperative relationship with the US. I think he has probably done as
good as he can do. As in, the solution is to allow Snowden to remain
in Russia in some status of temporary asylum, while he sorts out how
he’s going to go to a third country - Venezuela or some other
place. That’s a legal issue. He needs travel documents, and he
probably has to go to the embassy of that country in Moscow. But
although it’s legal, it’s profoundly political. In a way,
Russian-American relationships hinge on that at the moment. And as I
said the other day to an American who asked me, this tests the
leadership ability not only of Putin, but of Obama, to solve this
problem.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: You’ve brought up an
interesting point – saying that Putin likes to control the
situation. Do you think he would have acted differently if he wasn’t
confronted with the sheer fact of Snowden being in Russia?

Steven
Cohen: I mean, all leaders - real
leaders, state leaders - try to control the environment in which they
make decisions. Very often, they can’t. Wars come, acts of
terrorism come, and leaders change in other countries with which they
were doing business. What we don’t know about Snowden affair is
whether or not the Chinese, when they allowed Snowden to fly to
Moscow from Hong Kong, cleared it with the Russian end. Whether the
Russians said, “Okay, send him along.” If that happened - and we
don’t know, but I would guess it did because the Chinese-Russian
relationship is very important and very close at the moment - I would
assume that whoever in Moscow made that decision - it might not have
been President Putin; he can’t make every decision before it
becomes a crisis – they may have assumed that in fact Snowden was
going to do as Snowden was going to do – spend maybe ten hours in
the transit section of Sheremetyevo airport and then get on a plane
to Havana, and onwards, as he thought, to Ecuador. And then, a
problem rose with Ecuador and he is still in Moscow. So in that
sense, we don’t know if Putin said “Ok, travel through Moscow,”
not knowing he was going to become a kind of resident in Moscow. We
just don’t know that.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: Another problem is that
his passport was cancelled so he couldn’t really fly through Moscow
even if he wanted to. But given the way things are right now, what
does Russia risk if it grants Snowden official refugee status?

Steven
Cohen: As you know, there is a very
strong anti-Kremlin, anti-Putin, anti-Russian lobby in Washington.
Its citadel is the US Congress. That’s why we get preposterous
legislation like the Magnitsky act. Congress is prepared to do
anything to strike at Russia. Yesterday, for example, one of the
senators proposed that the US boycott the Winter Olympics in Russia
in 2014 – that won’t happen – but the mere fact that the US
senator, who is supposed to be a person of wisdom and dignity, would
propose such a preposterous thing shows you what kind of Congress we
are dealing with. I predict - and I think any idiot could predict -
that when, and I assume it’s “when” Snowden gets his temporary
asylum in Moscow, the members of Congress, members of the various
anti-Russian lobbies like Freedom House in the US, and many others
will denounce the Kremlin and demand that Obama does something very
bad to Russia. And then Obama will be tested – we will see if he
can withstand that or not. That’s why I say by the way, that I
think it’s is a kind of test - not only of the wisdom and the
leadership of Putin - but the wisdom and the leadership of Obama. Let
me remind you, Obama didn’t ask for this Snowden crisis. Putin
didn’t ask for it. They just got it.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: The media right now is
more focused on Snowden’s personal life - what he eats, what he
wears, where he lives, where his girlfriend is – than his
revelations and the leaks. Can we expect the attention to turn back
to the NSA and PRISM, or is that issue now buried under the Snowden
narrative?

Steven
Cohen: You raised what for me is the
fundamental question: What should we, the Americans, be doing now?
Ever since Snowden made these revelations, there’s been a big open,
public debate about whether or not we approve of these massive,
intrusive surveillance programs by American intelligence agencies.
And of course, Europe and Russia and other countries who had been
survellied have to make that decision too. But first and foremost,
this is the question for Americans: Is it compatible with our
concept of democracy? Of civil liberties? Of privacy? Or, on the
other hand, do we need these kinds of abuses of civil liberties to
protect ourselves against terrorism? There are two sides of this
issue. It’s a complicated issue. Snowden wanted to trigger a debate
and he has failed, because as you say, the drama of the personal saga
of Edward Snowden – what’s going to happen to him, where he is
going to go, where his girlfriend is, he looked so young – all
these personal dramas [have taken the spotlight]. And I would guess
that Snowden, who seems to be a very serious and purposeful man, is
himself disappointed – because his purpose, as he says, and I
believe him, in making these revelations is making a conversation in
the US about these surveillance practices, which, because of his own
drama, hasn’t happened yet – and it may never happen. And Sophie,
let me add a matter that is absolutely never discussed in the US, but
it’s profound: Obama says, the US government says, the Senators
say, the Media says, “Showden should come home and stand trial.”
Well, in some ways, if he could get a fair trial, if he could be out
on bail - the way Daniel Elsberg was 30 years ago when he took the
Pentagon papes - while he is preparing his trial, and he could tell a
story, and he could build a legal team, and he could have an
open-court case with all the rights the defendants have, that means
that he could have all sorts of officials involved with this case,
right up to the vice president and the president of the US. I cannot
imagine that the Obama administration or any US administration would
permit that, therefore I doubt very seriously that Obama is sincere
when he says that Showden should come home and stand trial. But I
would guess that if Snowden was given these guarantees - of being out
of prison and on bail and free to have an open trial - he might come
home. But he is not going to get those guarantees, I would guess,
because we live in a different era, here in America too.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: I want to talk a little
bit more about what has changed, whether the whole NSA leaks have
changed the American society. Because if you talk about me and people
around me, who have a post-Soviet hangover or had a Soviet
childhood…these revelations weren’t life changing for us, because
we suspected surveillance in some form or another. Many RT viewers
are strongly against any form of surveillance, but still, I know a
lot of Americans that are around and they are not saying “Hey, at
this point – we’re done with the government.” For example,
Larry King, he told me that he is actually siding with the government
on surveillance. What do you see around you – are the people still
shocked, or they are digesting and accepting it in the name of the
War on Terror?

Steven
Cohen: I understand what you are saying
about your Russian colleagues - surveillance is a problem in Russia
too and it has been a problem for decades. And there is a debate in
the Russian media whether the FSB - the Russian intelligence agency -
is doing too much or too little. And let’s be fair, people in
Russia and in the US are afraid of terrorism. If you asked me, would
I allow the US government to listen to my phone calls and read my
email if they are going to prevent my children from being killed in a
terrorist explosion in New York City where I live, I would
undoubtedly say,“Yes.” I’ll just be a little more careful in
what I say on the phone and what I write in the email. But this is a
major question, and times have changed. I’m old enough to remember
the Osborne case, when he took the Pentagon papers which documented
the Pentagon and White House line about the war in Vietnam, and then
the New York Times published them. Then they were published very
quickly as a book, and Elsberg was on the radio, and on television as
it existed then. He was out on bail and famous lawyers came to defend
him. And in the end, he was exonerated in a way. He won in the
courts. That America doesn’t exist anymore - partly because of what
happened in 9/11, and partly because we fought so many wars. Many
Americans are afraid and we have become more accustomed, decade by
decade, to this kind of surveillance. So the question that Snowden
raised is, “Should we become accustomed to it? Is this really a
trade-off between our fears and our privacy that we want to make?”
But I agree with you, the polls have shown – I don’t remember the
last number that the polls revealed - but about half of Americans or
even more were okay with what the government was doing. But Sophie,
you know as well as I do that when you take a public opinion poll,
you can give the answer you want by the way you ask the question. If
you say in general to Americans – are you prepared to give up all
your freedoms that Americans have fought for, for 200 years, and
allow the government to do this kind of possibly illegal
surveillance, a majority would say “No.” But if you ask people,
“Are you prepared to permit this surveillance so that you and your
children are safe?,” the majority is going to say “Yes.” It’s
just in how you ask the question and you can’t ask the question
until you’ve had a national discussion - which we haven’t had and
which the government doesn’t want – but what Snowden wanted. But
again, until Snowden’s personal drama ends, or at least calms down
and moves off the front page, we’re not going to have that
discussion in our country. And even then, we may not have it because
the government doesn’t want it.

Sophie Shevardnadze:
Welcome back to the show. We’re talking about Snowden and how his
Moscow detour can affect the already shaken relationship between
Russia and the US. Our guest is Steven Cohen, professor of Russian
Studies and History. Good to have you back, Steven. So, in your
latest opinion editorials, you keep saying that Russia and the US are
at a hateful crossroads. Is Snowden’s case icing on the cake? Could
things get really bad after this?

Steven
Cohen: I have a historical perspective.
Let me state it again, 22 years after the end of the Soviet Union. We
do not have a good relationship with Russia. Nobody asks why. Rather,
in the US, when people are asked “Why,” they will say it’s the
fault of Russia. Now they say it’s the fault of Putin. But that is
not correct and certainly not a complete answer. We had several
opportunities to establish partnership with Russia in international
affairs. The first came in the 1990s after the end of the Soviet
Union, and Clinton with Yeltsin war-set opportunities. The second
opportunity came after 9/11, when Putin called President George Bush
and said “We are with you, what can we do to help the US which has
been attacked by terrorism? We’re partners.” That opportunity was
lost. Then came Obama’s so-called “Reset” with then President
Medvedev, and that opportunity was lost. Now, the tragic bombings in
Boston and the tragic civil war in Syria have shown Washington and
Moscow that we need a cooperative relationship and that created yet
another opportunity. It’s not clear whether we will seize the
opportunity with Snowden... the Magnitsky act and other events…have
become obstacles on both sides to seizing these opportunities. The
larger reason in my opinion - which is a minority opinion in America
- is that my generation knew as the Cold War between the Soviet Union
and the US either didn’t actually end with the Soviet Union, or
it’s come alive again. Because everything we’ve seen between
Russia and America since the end of the Soviet Union looks, smells,
and behaves like a Cold War relationship. It’s just that in the US,
our leaders don’t want to accept this failure - that they lost an
opportunity in post-Cold War Russia to create a new relationship, a
partnership with Russia. And that’s where we are today. So it’s a
long way to answer, but I think that historians will tell you in the
future - and as a historian today, I would tell you - that we can’t
understand Snowden. We can’t understand Magnitsky. We can’t
understand these recent conflicts without putting them into
historical context of a relationship between America and post-Soviet
Russia during the last 22 years. This is a narrative that hasn’t
stopped.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: You just demonstrated
that obstacles or opportunities to get two countries closer or get
them more apart arise all the time – and these talks of the Cold
War have been around forever, or in the past 15 years. You seem to be
pointing out that we are now at a hateful crossroads. How much worse
are things are now than they were in the Bush Era? Because it seemed
like they were at the lowest then.

Steven
Cohen: The low point of the
relationship since the end of the Soviet Union was of course the war
with Georgia in 2008. And the reason that that was a low point is
that the US and Russia came close to hot war, not just Cold War.
Georgia began the war, no doubt about that. Russia reacted by moving
into South Ossetia. It began the fight with the Georgian army which
was, in effect, an American proxy army. We created that army. We
armed it. We trained it. There were American military advisors
somewhere in the Georgia, traveling with the Georgian troops. There
was a discussion at the White House, led by Dick Cheney, that the US
should bomb the Russian army in South Ossetia.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: But no one stood up for
the Georgian army there because no one really wants to wage a war
with Russia. That’s another example of how America and Russia would
never actually go to war…

Steven
Cohen: I don’t know about that,
Sophie. Where is that written, that we would never go to war? We were
extremely close in the Cuban Missile crisis, we were extremely close
in Berlin on a number of occasions. There were probably occasions
that we haven’t been told about, and in my judgment we were close
in Georgia in 2008. No fault of Russia – but how many times can we
avoid these dangerous possibilities? My point is, it’s the duty of
leadership – American leadership and Russian leadership - to create
a relationship where these dangers don’t appear. And we haven’t
done that yet. And I will say as an American patriot, the primary
fault – not the entire fault – but the primary fault is in
Washington. Until American policy toward Russia changes, things will
not get better. And American policy toward Russia hasn’t changed on
one fundamental issue: Washington believes in what it calls
“selective cooperation,” which means Russia should make
concessions but Washington does not have to make concessions in
return. Until that policy changes, nothing else will change. I am
absolutely sure about that.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: Does that mean that they
don’t want a better relationship with Russia? They simply don’t
care enough to ameliorate their relationship with Russia? Things are
good as they are?

Steven
Cohen: The American political policy
media establishment wants a good relationship with Russia once it’s
on America’s own terms. And it’s very clear what that means,
because it has meant the same thing since the Soviet Union – Russia
should be a junior and subservient partner to American interests.
Whatever is in the American interest, Russia should help promote. So,
if America decides to expand NATO to Russia’s borders, Russia
should accept this as a very good idea to its own security. If
America decides to build missile installations in Europe or on ships
that threaten Russia’s nuclear security, Russia should understand
that that’s really against North Korea or Iran, and it doesn’t
affect Russia. If the US believes that the overthrow of Assad in
Syria will bring peace to the Middle East, Russia should agree. The
problem is, Russia doesn’t agree. Russia is a different
civilization, but the bad precedent was set – I don’t like to
criticize your leaders because it’s your problems -by Yeltsin, who
agreed almost on everything. And so Washington got into a habit of
getting what it wanted. But even ambassador McFaul has said on a
several occasions during the “reset” which he claims he invented,
“We’re going to negotiate with Moscow, and see what they can do
to promote our national interests.” Fine – but that’s one hand
clapping. A real negotiation, real diplomacy, is not that. It is
that we go to Moscow and say “Here are our interests, will you help
us?” And then Moscow says, “We might. Here are our interests.
Will you help us?” And then they do something for each other.
Washington doesn’t do anything. I would defy anybody who thinks I’m
being unpatriotic –just tell me one major concession that Moscow
has received from Washington since the end of the Soviet Union? Just
one? And when I ask this question, at all just, leading places of
the American establishment, I do get one answer: “We gave them
financial loans in the 1990s.” Yeah, they were onerous loans which
only Putin, because of high oil prices, could finally pay back.
Although Washington forgave Poland’s communist-era debt, it never
forgave any of Moscow’s debts. We have never given Russia
anything. By the way, Putin says that over and over and over again,
and Washington says, “Why is he so anti-American? “ He is not
anti-American, he just made a very simple point that any major leader
would make – that a relationship is a two-way relationship: We give
something to you, you give something to us, and we go forward and
solve problems. We don’t have that relationship and we haven’t
had it since the Soviet Union ended. We had it with the Soviet Union,
but that’s another story.

Sophie
Shevardnadze: The “Reset” idea –
is it all forgotten and dead now?

Steven
Cohen: In America, it’s something
that Obama’s enemies use to show how unwise he is and say it
failed. The reality is that Obama got what he wanted from the “Reset”
– he got Russian help in supplying NATO forces in Afghanistan. He
got tougher sanctions against Iran. He got Moscow’s cancellation of
the C-300 defense system, I think. The problem is, once again…what
did Moscow get in return? Nothing. They wanted a compromise on
missile defense. They wanted the end of NATO expansion and an end to
American democracy promotion in Russia. But Washington refused. So
the “Reset” failed, Washington got what it wanted, and now we are
starting all over again…The new détente – we used to call it
“détente” during the Cold War – is going to fail unless
American policy changes. It’s a sad story, but it’s a true story.